The Dead Take the A Train

Carrion City

By: Richard Kadrey, Cassandra Khaw

Narrated by: Natalie Naudus

2024 Dragon Awards, Short-listed
2023 Barnes and Noble Best New Books of the Year, Long-listed

New York Times best-selling author Richard Kadrey and Cassandra Khaw have teamed up to deliver a new dark story where Neil Gaiman meets Jessica Jones with magic, monsters, and mayhem.

Julie Crews is a coked-up, burnt-out 30-something who packs a lot of magic into her small body. She’s trying to establish herself as a major psychic operative in the NYC magic scene, and she’ll work the most gruesome gigs to claw her way to the top.

Desperate to break the dead-end grind, Julie summons a guardian angel for a quick career boost. But when her power grab accidentally releases an elder god hell-bent on the annihilation of our galaxy, the body count rises rapidly.

The Dead Take the A Train is a high-octane cocktail of Khaw’s cosmic horror and Kadrey’s gritty fantasy - shaken, not stirred.

A Macmillan Audio program from Tor Nightfire.

©2022 Richard Kadrey and Cassandra Khaw (P)2022 Macmillan Audio

Interesting and dark story

I enjoyed the book. Felt like it left a lot of threads open like it’s starting a series, but a little more closure would have suited. If there is a second book I’d probably check it out.

Not up to the level I expect from Richard. Curious how much input he actually had.

A fun adventure in A Wonderful Supernatural World

The Dead Take the A Train is a pretty fun read overall, being a fan of Kadrey it felt very reminiscent of the Sandman Slim series with different descriptors/language used. Julie is a wonderful protagonist set along with a fantastic cast of major and secondary characters, all of whom are great in their own ways, with Saint Joan being one of my favorites. The story is great, hits all the right boxes in terms of a supernatural title, has the Eldritch horrors, the not so human beings walking among the general populace, angels & demons, dark magic and culty organizations. While I very much enjoyed this title I do believe that the narrator fell short a few times throughout the book. Where she does an amazing job with giving most of not all of the female characters a unique voice, quite a few of the male characters sounded very similar or just not as there as the other characters. I enjoyed this book and the world itself is fun, exciting, all while being familiar in the same stroke because of prior experiences with the authors, and absolutely cannot wait to read and listen to the sequel whenever it comes around.

Glorious World Building

the attention to detail in this book + every characters complexity+ the unexpected twists and turns= a really cool read!

Decent fun story

It’s a fun light listen, with some interesting characters. I expected a richer story with Richard Kadrey’s name in it. Not bad, not awesome.

Loved this book so much!

I loved all of this book! the characters, narrator, story, all of it was very entertaining!!

I Really Wanted to Love This

I'm convinced Cassandra Khaw is not for me. I really wanted to love this. It had everything I wanted, but I just couldn't get into it. I DNF'd it at just under 50%.

A ton of fun.

A blast to listen to. Detestable bad guys in a seedy magical underbelly in New York. A very entertaining group of protagonists that have to deal with all the crap that comes along with their world. Well worth the credit.

A total romp

I’m an 80s kid who lived for Splatterpunk short story anthologies in the 90s… this book finally scratched the itch. Whether you call it splatterpunk, new weird or new horror, this foul-mouthed body horror and softly sapphic novel is excellent squelchy fun.

Could of been a good story

It started out strong but lost me in the end. The story was flat the characters were okay. All in all a fair book.

About two hours too long

While this book has some great characters, this book was exhausting to finish. One thing after another kept the story from ending, lots of side quests and a meandering main plot. I was expecting more horror. This book would best be classified as sci-fi, with a great start and a lackluster ending. Narration was great.